Canada’s chief justice hangs up her red robes

It is the end of an era — and what an era it was. Quebec separation, same-sex marriage, physician-assisted death, and so on — Supreme Court Chief Justice Beverley McLachlin has participated in the most momentous and divisive legal debates of the past three decades.

Chief Justice Beverley McLachlinAfter hearing more than 2,000 appeals, considering close to 5,000 applications for leave to appeal, and writing more than 400 judgments — including many groundbreaking decisions that reshaped Canadian society — the Supreme Court’s longest-serving, and first female,...